I spent the weekend at Fremantle coaching the Flying 15’s at their Worlds Practice Event over the weekend, which was very interesting.
Saturday had a building Seabreeze from 10 to 22 knots and Sunday a fading Easterly from 18 to 2 knots. So a very good range of conditions to experience all in two days.
I outlined a few key areas to focus on
- Learning from the Experience for the Pre-Worlds (not just racing taking the same approach)
- Logistics (Timing, Food, Water, Sun, Cloths, launching)
- Starts (Skills and Execution)
- Speed (Settings, Wave Specific (twist), Handling Waves)
- Downwind (Handling Waves)
- Manoeuvres (To allow strategy and tactical decisions)
There were a lot of lessons coming out of the weekend and hopefully some focus on training going forward, including:
Logistics
Identify Strategy (Persistent, Oscillating, Random, Lifted Tack, Pressure, Biased Course)
Starting (Sailing with more intensity out of the blocks; Know your mode (high mode, vmg – both sails trimmed accordingly)
Experimenting Who tried something – There was a big difference to the tuning on the fast boats to the others
Speed
A few boats learned and experimented with more Mast Ram to promote the bend at the top of the mast to lower the centre of effort. More Vang, More Ram (back) and a lot more Cunningham to bend the topmast. Boats that did this (and kept hiking) had a much faster motion through the water.
Top Rounding (Sets)
By now the breeze was up and many boats struggling with the sets. A few nosedived. Discussion on this after the race to try to: Turn with more speed, down a wave, with less rudder movement and steering with bodyweight, then go really fast to get spinnaker before hitting the next wave, whilst the boat is stable.
Below are a few photos from the weekend.
